LeMond III

[Stingray34]

Re: LeMond

And I'm supposed to ignore these documented facts in favour of the word of a documented liar and cheat who entered the sport more than 20 years after Lemond had left it, because he heard from somebody who heard it from somebody else who heard it from somebody else who heard it from somebody else who heard it from somebody else who heard it from somebody else who heard it from somebody else ...that Lemond used EPO?

More accurately, the rumor of the word of a documented liar and cheat. Someone who publicly attacked and threatened Lemond for telling the truth about him.

This isn't a quote. This is something someone, about whom we know little or nothing, said they heard Landis say. All the other stuff is totally on point.

Sniper: You do realize that Julien DeVries has said NUMEROUS times that Greg was clean, right? Infact, he's said it on this board a few times.

DeVries is on this forum? What's his handle?

 

[djpbaltimore]

Re: Re:

...

you (and djpbaltimore) are simplifying the issue. Lemond, according to Lemond, not only had chronic kidney infections, he also had only one kidney. Now, I'm not an authority on kidney issues, but tell me how is a guy with (a) one kidney and (b) chronic kidney infections, not a kidney patient?

When he has a normal Glomerular Filtration Rate. Transplantation patients only get one kidney and have 100% function. Same is true for the donors. 'Kidney patients' are generally older, have high blood pressure, or diabetes.

It is interesting that this line of 'inquiry' dates all the way back to July. And even then, it was explained clearly and concisely. Yet, it pops up again about every couple weeks.

viewtopic.php?p=1768811#p1768811

 

[red_flanders]

Re:

But seriously, folks. As I said way up thread, LeMond might have blood doped in 1986. If so he was within the rules, so why should he volunteer this information?

One could dig up his times up climbs and in TT's in 1986 and show how those compare with times on similar stages/mountains from people who actually were on EPO in the mid-nineties and afterwards, when we know for sure the top riders were using it. One could watch the videos and see the staggering differences in speed between those eras. Then look at his performance the years before. Does he look more similar to himself from 84/85, or the EPO-fueled riders 8-10 years later? Pretty obvious answers there. Nothing in his performance points to EPO use.

Is it theoretically possible that Lemond used EPO in 1986? Maybe. Before that? No, unless he's a time lord. Is there any evidence of his using it in 1986? No. Is there strong evidence against it? Yes.

 

[HSNHSN]

Re: LeMond

Thanks an aweful lot for the AD article several pages back, Sniper! I hadn't read much in this thread until its reopening, since it was just a lot of bickering and personal attacks (just as it seems to have become now, already). The first few pages after reopening really were a few missing pieces to a rather difficult puzzle to me.

When LeMond was on top of the cycling peloton, I was hardly born yet - I'm from 1988. Nonetheless, when I grew up and got interested in cycling at a pretty young age, I learned very quickly about the history of the sport. All sources I read at the time (that must be a combination of newspaper articles and library books) seemed to be in agreement about LeMond: that he was a huge talent, only won the Tour once when he was at his best, got shot during that horrible hunting accident and then continued to win the TdF due to drugs that were administered to him to recover from the accident.

At the time, I didn't know about EPO. In fact, I only learned about the stuff in '98 with the Festina affair (I can't tell you how horrible it is to hear your sports hero (Alex Zülle) admits to having used doping, when you're just about 10 years old and hardly know of the existence of doping yet), and I never connected it to the LeMond story I sort of knew to be a fact.

Thanks to reading this thread and in particular that newspaper snippet, I get the strong impression that LeMond actually used the (at the time) experimental drug EPO to aid his recovery and then continued to win the TdF two more times. I tend to believe the fact that he used the stuff without knowing he did - doctors may have given him the stuff claiming it was something else completely (like iron shots). It would fit in perfectly with everything I learned from when I was a young child and the facts I've read upthread, that LeMond was actually already in decline when he had the hunting accident, but still managed to win two TdFs afterwards. And still was a fierce opponent of using any prohibited substances.

There's one thing that would convince me 100% (since there's still a sliver of doubt inside me): if anyone would manage to find a connection between the doctor Vanmol and Michiel Karsten, I'd be totally convinced. They're both Dutch doctors from '88/'89 who are mentioned in connection with EPO and this seems far too much of a coincidence, just one year after EPO was announced to have been a success in clinical trials. According to several of Sniper's posts upthread, Vanmol was LeMond's doctor around the time and Karsten is the doctor who supposedly administered EPO to allow Yvonne van Gennip to win three gold medals at the '88 Winter Olympics, at the cost of the East German speed skaters. I'm afraid I couldn't find this connection online. All I could find was that Karsten claimed he administered PEDs to about 150 (!) sporters at the time and that in december 1997 he claimed he never administered EPO or HGH.

 

[Maxiton]

Re: Re:

But seriously, folks. As I said way up thread, LeMond might have blood doped in 1986. If so he was within the rules, so why should he volunteer this information?

One could dig up his times up climbs and in TT's in 1986 and show how those compare with times on similar stages/mountains from people who actually were on EPO in the mid-nineties and afterwards, when we know for sure the top riders were using it. One could watch the videos and see the staggering differences in speed between those eras. Then look at his performance the years before. Does he look more similar to himself from 84/85, or the EPO-fueled riders 8-10 years later? Pretty obvious answers there. Nothing in his performance points to EPO use.

Is it theoretically possible that Lemond used EPO in 1986? Maybe. Before that? No, unless he's a time lord. Is there any evidence of his using it in 1986? No. Is there strong evidence against it? Yes.

But I didn't say anything about EPO in 1986. I specifically said, way up thread and now, blood doping in 86. By which I mean autologous transfusion. EPO was in clinical trials in 86, but I'm assuming a bike racer wouldn't have had access to it. If EPO was used, 1989 is far more likely.

EPO might have compensated for whatever he lost by being shot, if he was the only one on it. By 1991, though, the jig was up in that others were on it, too. And if I'm not mistaken, EPO was proscribed by the UCI after May of '91. So, if you were a rider who lived by the principle of staying within the rules, EPO would have thereafter been off limits, meaning that LeMond could have used it at the Tour in 89 and 90, but not 91.

 

[pmcg76]

Re: Re:

But seriously, folks. As I said way up thread, LeMond might have blood doped in 1986. If so he was within the rules, so why should he volunteer this information?

One could dig up his times up climbs and in TT's in 1986 and show how those compare with times on similar stages/mountains from people who actually were on EPO in the mid-nineties and afterwards, when we know for sure the top riders were using it. One could watch the videos and see the staggering differences in speed between those eras. Then look at his performance the years before. Does he look more similar to himself from 84/85, or the EPO-fueled riders 8-10 years later? Pretty obvious answers there. Nothing in his performance points to EPO use.

Is it theoretically possible that Lemond used EPO in 1986? Maybe. Before that? No, unless he's a time lord. Is there any evidence of his using it in 1986? No. Is there strong evidence against it? Yes.

But I didn't say anything about EPO in 1986. I specifically said, way up thread and now, blood doping in 86. By which I mean autologous transfusion. EPO was in clinical trials in 86, but I'm assuming a bike racer wouldn't have had access to it. If EPO was used, 1989 is far more likely.

EPO might have compensated for whatever he lost by being shot, if he was the only one on it. By 1991, though, the jig was up in that others were on it, too. And if I'm not mistaken, EPO was proscribed by the UCI after May of '91. So, if you were a rider who lived by the principle of staying within the rules, EPO would have thereafter been off limits, meaning that LeMond could have used it at the Tour in 89 and 90, but not 91.

To me the time-lines make little sense. Like I posted before, in spring of that year 89 LeMond was competing with the likes of Fignon, Roche, Indurain, Mottet, Madiot at Criterium International in March. A week later, he was finishing miles down at Flanders despite have performed at Flanders previously. At the Giro he was finishing behind Paul Kimmage in mountains stages. That makes little sense. Was he on EPO for March and then stopped for the major classics? Why would he stop? Why would he not use EPO in prep for the Giro which was one of his targets for the season? Why only start using EPO halfway through the Giro?

Also in 89/90/91 LeMond rode the same prep DuPont/Giro/Suisse and then the Tour. In each of those seasons his form peaked for the Tour after riding poorly in the preceeding races. After his failure at the Tour in 91, he changed his programme to DuPont/Dauphine/Suisse in 92. He showed much better form like 9th in Paris-Roubaix, won Du Pont, 11th at the Dauphine and 4th at Suisse, then flopped at the Tour finishing outside the time-limit in the mountains. How does a rider go from 4th in Suisse to outside the time limit at the Tour a few weeks later if they are on EPO. Again, that makes zero sense.

The timelines just seem way off for EPO usage.

 

[Maxiton]

Re: Re:

But seriously, folks. As I said way up thread, LeMond might have blood doped in 1986. If so he was within the rules, so why should he volunteer this information?

One could dig up his times up climbs and in TT's in 1986 and show how those compare with times on similar stages/mountains from people who actually were on EPO in the mid-nineties and afterwards, when we know for sure the top riders were using it. One could watch the videos and see the staggering differences in speed between those eras. Then look at his performance the years before. Does he look more similar to himself from 84/85, or the EPO-fueled riders 8-10 years later? Pretty obvious answers there. Nothing in his performance points to EPO use.

Is it theoretically possible that Lemond used EPO in 1986? Maybe. Before that? No, unless he's a time lord. Is there any evidence of his using it in 1986? No. Is there strong evidence against it? Yes.

But I didn't say anything about EPO in 1986. I specifically said, way up thread and now, blood doping in 86. By which I mean autologous transfusion. EPO was in clinical trials in 86, but I'm assuming a bike racer wouldn't have had access to it. If EPO was used, 1989 is far more likely.

EPO might have compensated for whatever he lost by being shot, if he was the only one on it. By 1991, though, the jig was up in that others were on it, too. And if I'm not mistaken, EPO was proscribed by the UCI after May of '91. So, if you were a rider who lived by the principle of staying within the rules, EPO would have thereafter been off limits, meaning that LeMond could have used it at the Tour in 89 and 90, but not 91.

To me the time-lines make little sense. Like I posted before, in spring of that year 89 LeMond was competing with the likes of Fignon, Roche, Indurain, Mottet, Madiot at Criterium International in March. A week later, he was finishing miles down at Flanders despite have performed at Flanders previously. At the Giro he was finishing behind Paul Kimmage in mountains stages. That makes little sense. Was he on EPO for March and then stopped for the major classics? Why would he stop? Why would he not use EPO in prep for the Giro which was one of his targets for the season? Why only start using EPO halfway through the Giro?

Also in 89/90/91 LeMond rode the same prep DuPont/Giro/Suisse and then the Tour. In each of those seasons his form peaked for the Tour after riding poorly in the preceeding races. After his failure at the Tour in 91, he changed his programme to DuPont/Dauphine/Suisse in 92. He showed much better form like 9th in Paris-Roubaix, won Du Pont, 11th at the Dauphine and 4th at Suisse, then flopped at the Tour finishing outside the time-limit in the mountains. How does a rider go from 4th in Suisse to outside the time limit at the Tour a few weeks later if they are on EPO. Again, that makes zero sense.

The timelines just seem way off for EPO usage.

Good points. I don't know, off hand. Maybe he was trying as much as possible to rely on his undeniable gifts, only to find them lacking due to the gunshot, and later due to the use by his competitors of EPO after it was banned? Maybe someone else has some ideas?

 

[red_flanders]

Re: Re:

But seriously, folks. As I said way up thread, LeMond might have blood doped in 1986. If so he was within the rules, so why should he volunteer this information?

One could dig up his times up climbs and in TT's in 1986 and show how those compare with times on similar stages/mountains from people who actually were on EPO in the mid-nineties and afterwards, when we know for sure the top riders were using it. One could watch the videos and see the staggering differences in speed between those eras. Then look at his performance the years before. Does he look more similar to himself from 84/85, or the EPO-fueled riders 8-10 years later? Pretty obvious answers there. Nothing in his performance points to EPO use.

Is it theoretically possible that Lemond used EPO in 1986? Maybe. Before that? No, unless he's a time lord. Is there any evidence of his using it in 1986? No. Is there strong evidence against it? Yes.

But I didn't say anything about EPO in 1986. I specifically said, way up thread and now, blood doping in 86. By which I mean autologous transfusion. EPO was in clinical trials in 86, but I'm assuming a bike racer wouldn't have had access to it. If EPO was used, 1989 is far more likely.

EPO might have compensated for whatever he lost by being shot, if he was the only one on it. By 1991, though, the jig was up in that others were on it, too. And if I'm not mistaken, EPO was proscribed by the UCI after May of '91. So, if you were a rider who lived by the principle of staying within the rules, EPO would have thereafter been off limits, meaning that LeMond could have used it at the Tour in 89 and 90, but not 91.

Sorry for the confusion. I have never heard anything that indicated any riders were blood doping for Grand Tours in the 80's. There have been many discussions of this, with logistics, safety, etc.

I would ask the same questions–are we seeing anything in his performances to indicate he was transfusing? Unless we think he was transfusing during GT's from '84 on? For his Worlds and record-setting Tour de Avenir in '83?

I just don't ever see a jump in performance and I don't see any reasonable argument that he was blood doping during all of it. Seems wildly unlikely if even possible for the time.

 

[red_flanders]

Re: Re:

To me the time-lines make little sense. Like I posted before, in spring of that year 89 LeMond was competing with the likes of Fignon, Roche, Indurain, Mottet, Madiot at Criterium International in March. A week later, he was finishing miles down at Flanders despite have performed at Flanders previously. At the Giro he was finishing behind Paul Kimmage in mountains stages. That makes little sense. Was he on EPO for March and then stopped for the major classics? Why would he stop? Why would he not use EPO in prep for the Giro which was one of his targets for the season? Why only start using EPO halfway through the Giro?

Also in 89/90/91 LeMond rode the same prep DuPont/Giro/Suisse and then the Tour. In each of those seasons his form peaked for the Tour after riding poorly in the preceeding races. After his failure at the Tour in 91, he changed his programme to DuPont/Dauphine/Suisse in 92. He showed much better form like 9th in Paris-Roubaix, won Du Pont, 11th at the Dauphine and 4th at Suisse, then flopped at the Tour finishing outside the time-limit in the mountains. How does a rider go from 4th in Suisse to outside the time limit at the Tour a few weeks later if they are on EPO. Again, that makes zero sense.

The timelines just seem way off for EPO usage.

Good post. None of it makes any sense to me.

Do we really believe an EPO-fueled Lemond couldn't keep up in '91? Even with whatever else was going on? He certainly gained weight and certainly seems to have had other issues, but even with that, do we think he wasn't on EPO in '91 but was in '89 and '90? Makes no sense to me.

I think Lemond on EPO in '89 wins by 8 minutes not 8 seconds. Conservatively.

Again, the bottom line is that he never produced performances that looked like EPO or blood doping. How one gets much beyond that I don't really understand.

It's the exact opposite with someone like Froome. His performances are right there with all the top-level dopers from the worst era. I certainly have no proof he doped, but everything he does, everything about his timeline, his transformation, his history scream doper. No idea what he's using, but I can't fathom how it could be done clean...by him.

 

[Maxiton]

Re: Re:

But seriously, folks. As I said way up thread, LeMond might have blood doped in 1986. If so he was within the rules, so why should he volunteer this information?

One could dig up his times up climbs and in TT's in 1986 and show how those compare with times on similar stages/mountains from people who actually were on EPO in the mid-nineties and afterwards, when we know for sure the top riders were using it. One could watch the videos and see the staggering differences in speed between those eras. Then look at his performance the years before. Does he look more similar to himself from 84/85, or the EPO-fueled riders 8-10 years later? Pretty obvious answers there. Nothing in his performance points to EPO use.

Is it theoretically possible that Lemond used EPO in 1986? Maybe. Before that? No, unless he's a time lord. Is there any evidence of his using it in 1986? No. Is there strong evidence against it? Yes.

But I didn't say anything about EPO in 1986. I specifically said, way up thread and now, blood doping in 86. By which I mean autologous transfusion. EPO was in clinical trials in 86, but I'm assuming a bike racer wouldn't have had access to it. If EPO was used, 1989 is far more likely.

EPO might have compensated for whatever he lost by being shot, if he was the only one on it. By 1991, though, the jig was up in that others were on it, too. And if I'm not mistaken, EPO was proscribed by the UCI after May of '91. So, if you were a rider who lived by the principle of staying within the rules, EPO would have thereafter been off limits, meaning that LeMond could have used it at the Tour in 89 and 90, but not 91.

Sorry for the confusion. I have never heard anything that indicated any riders were blood doping for Grand Tours in the 80's. There have been many discussions of this, with logistics, safety, etc.

I would ask the same questions–are we seeing anything in his performances to indicate he was transfusing? Unless we think he was transfusing during GT's from '84 on? For his Worlds and record-setting Tour de Avenir in '83?

I just don't ever see a jump in performance and I don't see any reasonable argument that he was blood doping during all of it. Seems wildly unlikely if even possible for the time.

With regard to blood doping in the eighties, up thread I posted this:

If you care about the truth more than you do about winning this non-existent debate, you can do the research yourself.

I've done the research honey, and shared it. And there is zero evidence for transfusions being regularly used in cycling in the 1970s.

The same questions could be asked about the doctor who assisted Zoetemelk (or, later, the doc who assisted Moser) in transfusing. Are we to believe that Zoetemelk didn't share this info with his teammates, or that Zoetemelk's doctor didn't share this knowledge with other riders, or that these riders didn't take this info to other teams?

So your evidence for the regular use of transfusions in the 1970s is this: the doctor who suggested a transfusion to Merckx must have carried out transfusions on others. Ditto Fuchs and Zoetemelk. QED transfusions were being regularly used in the 70s.

Bloomin' marvelous.

(And the same questions could be asked of Moser and Moser's doctor and Moser's teammates in the early eighties.)

If you've read the previously linked articles you'll know that that question is answered.

Honey, sweetie pie, sugar plum,

Merckx in 1972 and Zoetemelk in 1975 are the leading indicators. If their doctors were advising them to transfuse to increase performance, there is every reason to think they were advising others similarly. I mean, why wouldn't they? And in a team-oriented sport such as cycling, as soon as one rider, especially a leader, tries something that gets great results, the word spreads, first on his own team, subsequently to other teams riders move to. That in fact is the nature of information spread. Furthermore, the efficacy of transfusion in endurance sport was not only well known then, even in the sporting press, but being practiced to great effect in Europe.

This is from the book Eddy Merckx: The Cannibal

Finish distance runners in major athletics championships (practiced autologous transfusion) from the beginning of the 1970s . . . The most famous exponent was the 1972 5,000 and 10,000 metre Olympic champion Lasse Viren, who admitted in a press conference in Munich that he had used transfusions. Seven weeks later, Merckx broke the hour record having "categorically refused" a blood transfusion . . . That blood transfusions were already part of the doping panopoly was confirmed again in 1976, when Joop Zoetemelk confessed that he had benefited from the technique the previous year (at the 1975 Tour de France) . . . overseen by the French doctor Henri Fucs . . . Zoetemelk was satisfied with the results but still seemed uneasy about the public's reaction, so much so that he declared upon arrival at the 1976 Tour that he would not be repeating the experiment.

While the French Cycling Federation, with the blessing of the French Sports Ministry, was including a public warning against the dangers of transfusions in its official magazine in 1977, endorsements of the procedure in other sporting disciplines continued to multiply; hence, in the spring of 1977, at around the time when Merckx was taking the fateful dose of Stimul, the German World Cup-winning Franz Beckenbauer told Stern magazine that he underwent exchange transfusions several times a month.

This is all to show that, contrary to what some would have us believe, Merckx was not dominating at a time when the only doping methods on offer were either unsophisticated or ineffective.

Eddie Merckx: The Cannibal p.316-317

 

[Maxiton]

Re: Re:

Do we really believe an EPO-fueled Lemond couldn't keep up in '91? Even with whatever else was going on? He certainly gained weight and certainly seems to have had other issues, but even with that, do we think he wasn't on EPO in '91 but was in '89 and '90? Makes no sense to me.

I think Lemond on EPO in '89 wins by 8 minutes not 8 seconds. Conservatively.

Again, the bottom line is that he never produced performances that looked like EPO or blood doping. How one gets much beyond that I don't really understand.

It's the exact opposite with someone like Froome. His performances are right there with all the top-level dopers from the worst era. I certainly have no proof he doped, but everything he does, everything about his timeline, his transformation, his history scream doper. No idea what he's using, but I can't fathom how it could be done clean...by him.

According to my idea, LeMond had this thing about winning without cheating. Weird, I know, especially in such a notoriously doped sport, but if true he wouldn't have been on EPO at the 91 Tour because it was banned after May of that year.

 

[sniper]

Re: LeMond

...
DeVries is on this forum? What's his handle?

was going to ask the same.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...

as much as you try to pretend to know in what kind of condition Lemond's kidneys really were, fact is you don't.
Neither do I.
I'm not saying Lemond really was a kidney patient. All I'm saying is he himself claimed to be one.
More specifically, he claimed to have chronic kidney infections and only one functioning kidney. He additionally claimed to have anemia in 1989 Giro.
If you have more details, do share.

Now, I don't think I have to remind you that epo is used for the treatment of anemia in patients with chronic kidney disease or otherwise malfunctioning kidneys.
So the potential relevance of pointing out that lemond (says he) had chronic kidney infections..and only one functioning kidney...and anemia, all whilst rumored to have introduced epo into the peloton, is, I think, abundantly clear, even to you.

If you have more details on the state of Lemond's kidneys, do share. Otherwise, let's move on.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...
According to my idea, LeMond had this thing about winning without cheating. Weird, I know, especially in such a notoriously doped sport, but if true he wouldn't have been on EPO at the 91 Tour because it was banned after May of that year.

this is a possibility.
Reasons why I doubt it, is that it would not explain why he did cheat on the techonological front. Or why he buddies up with known dopers and keepers of omerta (such as Rini Wagtmans). Nor, in my personal view of the world and of cheats, does it nicely fit in with his well-known 'love for the dollar', and determination to win at all costs. If he had his mind set on winning and becoming rich at all costs, then I'm not sure why cheating would have been beyond him.
It also leaves unexplained the rumors about Lemond's ordinary PED abuse (see e.g. esafosfina's posts, and see rumors posted in the old Lemond thread where Ewa Maria was posting; elsewhere he's rumored to have been a Freddy Sergeant client).
But that doesn't mean it's not a possibility.

A better possibility, imo, is that it was health-related. As I posted earlier:

...
Halupczok died 1990, due to a heart attack likely caused by EPO, as did several other riders with whom Greg Lemond was in more or less close contact (Draaijer of course the best well known one)...and suddenly one starts to understand why Lemond called it a day in 1991.

And 'calling it a day' may even be a gross overstatement. Maybe he just toned it down. He wasn't that bad in 1991.
Either way, it nicely fits with what Nick777 posted that according to a doc in the know Lemond's blood was getting too thick towards the end of his carreer. If there's truth to that rumor (and I haven't seen any reason to assume it was made up to discredit Lemond), it is not hard to understand why he would have toned it down.

 

[GJB123]

Re: Re:

...

as much as you try to pretend to know in what kind of condition Lemond's kidneys really were, fact is you don't.
Neither do I.
I'm not saying Lemond really was a kidney patient. All I'm saying is he himself claimed to be one.
More specifically, he claimed to have chronic kidney infections and only one functioning kidney. He additionally claimed to have anemia in 1989 Giro.
If you have more details, do share.

Now, I don't think I have to remind you that epo is used for the treatment of anemia in patients with chronic kidney disease or otherwise malfunctioning kidneys.
So the potential relevance of pointing out that lemond (says he) had chronic kidney infections..and only one functioning kidney...and anemia, all whilst rumored to have introduced epo into the peloton, is, I think, abundantly clear, even to you.

If you have more details on the state of Lemond's kidneys, do share. Otherwise, let's move on.

Chronic kidney infections (treated with antibiotica) do not equal chronic kidney disease (requiring dialyses), a person can function perfectly well with only one working kidney, chronic kidney infections (if and when they were still prevalent with LeMond as a grown-up and that is a big if) do not lead to anemia.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

...
Oh my, here we go again. I will spell it out for you. Chronic kidney infections (treated with antibiotica) do not equal chronic kidney disease (requiring dialyses),

i didn't say it does.

a person can function perfectly well with only one working kidney,

i didn't say a person can't.

chronic kidney infections (if and when they were still prevalent with LeMond as a grown-up and that is a big if) do not lead to anemia.

never said it did. (agree with the big if, also)

Now what part of that don't you understand?

in understand all of that. we're in total agreement.

 

[GJB123]

Re: Re:

...
Oh my, here we go again. I will spell it out for you. Chronic kidney infections (treated with antibiotica) do not equal chronic kidney disease (requiring dialyses),

i didn't say it does.

a person can function perfectly well with only one working kidney,

i didn't say a person can't.

chronic kidney infections (if and when they were still prevalent with LeMond as a grown-up and that is a big if) do not lead to anemia.

never said it did. (agree with the big if, also)

Now what part of that don't you understand?

in understand all of that. we're in total agreement.

If we are in agreement then using exactly those arguments to link LeMond to EPO are spurious at best.

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

@stingray: thanks for the link, will look at that later.

wrt Lemond's father-in-law, I don't think you're curious enough.
He was not only an MD, he was (is) a renowned allergist/immunologist - ask Froome how useful that can be - and an ex-surgeon of the US army (so would have had first hand experience with blood transfusions, a.o.).
That's one thing. The other thing is that he was traveling with Lemond to GTs and seems to have been an active part of Lemond's medical team.

So Greg's FIL is Hawkeye Peirce - how cool is that!

Y'know what, fair play - I didn't know that about Greg's family background. You've done a good job there. You've even dredged up posts by Eva Maria - good lord! - that takes some serious internet search skills that I will never possess.

But I have to ask you this: what is it that convinces you Greg's 'story', his career, is built on lies like a certain other American? Where did this desire to search come from? If you're onto something true and real, then great and God bless - I don't wan't to be fooled, either, or see someone receiving ill-gotten gains. Some part of me thinks, no - feels - that some people need an enemy, a tall poppy to bring down, because it was so great to see an obvious one brought to heel, and so addictive that we need that rush of conviction all the time now.

We've seen something similar in a good number of posters here. After the hated Gorgon was beheaded, the Titan smothered and banished, the rush was so delectable a constant stream of easy-but-big victims was desired.

I really hope this isn't the motivation here.

Yes, I admit it - I discovered cycling as a 13 year old when LeMond was a big champion, and I rode on his every exploit and victory. I loved the guy! Still do. He was the best physical alter-ego I could ever have hoped for. Maybe I'm invested in him like so many did with another guy a few years later. I'd like to think I'm smarter than that, because I never liked the brash kid much. I wanted to like his comeback, but it didn't pass what we call in Australia 'the pub test.' A pub is a bar in Australia, but much more than that. No BS may be admitted into a pub. That's the best way to explain it. He was doping. Cheating. It was obvious. I was glad he lived to ride again, but....

But he made a career on a lie. A conglomerate. The LeMond shenanigans came later, and I wasn't paying much attention by then.

Did LeMond introduce dope to the pro peloton? Well how the hell do I know?! But it's a proposition that just doesn't pass the pub test.

It's Revisionism. Which is never good. In cycling, history is never written by the winners, just about them. In Greg LeMond's case, his history has been written. Now the book has closed. No revisions necessary.

agreed with Glenn Wilson, very nice post and very nice 'light', enjoyable defense of Lemond.

I have no issue. at. all. with posters defending Lemond, on the contrary. The only thing I have a 'problem' with is the aggression displayed by some posters to whom this all seems to be a matter of life and death and who seem to want to make this into a pissing contest and "credibility" debate. My advice to them is to either lighten up, or avoid the Lemond thread if lightening up is not a possibility.

So that's certainly not directed to you, stingray. I've enjoyed your light-hearted defense of Lemond, and the last thing I want is for you to loose your admiration for him.

To briefly address the part where you ask about my motivation.
If you look at my history, you'll see that not long ago I was firmly seated on the Lemond-is-clean-bus alongside so many other clinic posters (including even benotti69 ). And I should stress I have nothing, zilch, nada against Lemond as a person or athlete. Quite on the contrary. Unlike some others, I actually enjoy his appearances on Eurosport.
Anyway, my Lemond-is-clean view changed into mild skepticism when I read about the Dhaenens rumor. That must have been ca. one or two years ago.
Reading about that got me thinking, especially when I looked in the Lemond thread and I saw, to my big surprise (and that sense of surprise still hasn't left me), that it had not been discussed anywhere in the Clinic before.
It was only after reading about that rumor, that I started to look into Lemond more closely and do some basic googling on his medical history. Lemond is well before my time, and so I must admit (and have admitted) that I knew hardly anything about him.
Everything is else I've posted about is just the result of (pretty elementary) google searches, or, more precisely: me trying to satisfy my own curiosity. Add that to my personal scepticism about doping in cycling which has grown considerably over the past few years.
Btw, in case you're interested, I joined this forum in 2010 looking for details on Contador's positive. I haven't joined any other online discussion forum ever before, or ever since. The Clinic suffices

Larger questions for me are/were:
a. why are so many people willing to give Lemond the benefit of the doubt but not, say, Wiggins or Sastre or Evans.
b. why hadn't basic things such as the Dhaenens rumor been discussed in the Clinic before?
c. why do some posters seem so invested in preventing Lemond discussions in the Clinic.

So my only agenda would be "curiosity".
And seeing certain posters being so invested in sabotaging and/or taboo-izing Lemond discussions by means of insult and ridicule, has certainly sparked my curiosity even further.
Compare what happened in the "biggest cheat" thread. Lemond scoring so high in that poll was a mere form of protest against the taboization of Lemond in the Clinic.

As for digging up Ewa Maria posts: I just typed "Lemond" in the search engine, limiting the search to (a) the Clinic and (b) thread title/topics (as opposed to contents of posts). All existing Clinic threads with "Lemond" in the title come rolling out.

 

[GJB123]

Re: LeMond

Thanks an aweful lot for the AD article several pages back, Sniper! I hadn't read much in this thread until its reopening, since it was just a lot of bickering and personal attacks (just as it seems to have become now, already). The first few pages after reopening really were a few missing pieces to a rather difficult puzzle to me.

When LeMond was on top of the cycling peloton, I was hardly born yet - I'm from 1988. Nonetheless, when I grew up and got interested in cycling at a pretty young age, I learned very quickly about the history of the sport. All sources I read at the time (that must be a combination of newspaper articles and library books) seemed to be in agreement about LeMond: that he was a huge talent, only won the Tour once when he was at his best, got shot during that horrible hunting accident and then continued to win the TdF due to drugs that were administered to him to recover from the accident.

At the time, I didn't know about EPO. In fact, I only learned about the stuff in '98 with the Festina affair (I can't tell you how horrible it is to hear your sports hero (Alex Zülle) admits to having used doping, when you're just about 10 years old and hardly know of the existence of doping yet), and I never connected it to the LeMond story I sort of knew to be a fact.

Thanks to reading this thread and in particular that newspaper snippet, I get the strong impression that LeMond actually used the (at the time) experimental drug EPO to aid his recovery and then continued to win the TdF two more times. I tend to believe the fact that he used the stuff without knowing he did - doctors may have given him the stuff claiming it was something else completely (like iron shots). It would fit in perfectly with everything I learned from when I was a young child and the facts I've read upthread, that LeMond was actually already in decline when he had the hunting accident, but still managed to win two TdFs afterwards. And still was a fierce opponent of using any prohibited substances.

There's one thing that would convince me 100% (since there's still a sliver of doubt inside me): if anyone would manage to find a connection between the doctor Vanmol and Michiel Karsten, I'd be totally convinced. They're both Dutch doctors from '88/'89 who are mentioned in connection with EPO and this seems far too much of a coincidence, just one year after EPO was announced to have been a success in clinical trials. According to several of Sniper's posts upthread, Vanmol was LeMond's doctor around the time and Karsten is the doctor who supposedly administered EPO to allow Yvonne van Gennip to win three gold medals at the '88 Winter Olympics, at the cost of the East German speed skaters. I'm afraid I couldn't find this connection online. All I could find was that Karsten claimed he administered PEDs to about 150 (!) sporters at the time and that in december 1997 he claimed he never administered EPO or HGH.

I know you say you were born in 1988 and therefore have not actually lived through the 80's and haven't seen LeMond perform at the time, but LeMond was already in decline when he had the hunting accident? Are you for real? LeMond was 3rd in '84, 2nd in '85 (should have been 1st) and 1st in 1986 (at the age of 25). In 1987 he was a mere 25 years old when he had the hunting accident. I repeat, he just came of a TdF-winmer and was 25 turning on 26 in 1987. He was supposed to start his prime years (26-30 years old) and to allude that we was somehow already on a decline in 1987 shows that you actually have no clue what you are talking about. Without the hunting accident LeMond would have been in the mix for '87 and '88 as well and probably would have won a number of additional GT's to the ones he won in the end.

 

[sniper]

Re: LeMond

Thanks an aweful lot for the AD article several pages back, Sniper!

credit where credit is due: it was posted earlier by Fearless Greg Lemond, who, by the way, has also contributed some amazing stuff (some hard-to-find, little-known articles) to the dopeology website.

...
At the time, I didn't know about EPO. In fact, I only learned about the stuff in '98 with the Festina affair (I can't tell you how horrible it is to hear your sports hero (Alex Zülle) admits to having used doping, when you're just about 10 years old and hardly know of the existence of doping yet), and I never connected it to the LeMond story I sort of knew to be a fact.

same here. I didn't know anything about EPO. Hell, I didn't know *** about doping at all, until the Contador positive broke in 2010, and I joined this forum, which has been a major eyeopener.
My sporting heroes are few (Dutch cycling has been hopeless ever since I follow the sport ), and if I have any, it would be in soccer, guys like Cruyff and Van Basten. And yes, it was quite sobering to learn that they, too, are all doped to the gills. But then again, I've never been the kind of poster to blame individuals for their doping. It's the system that's doing most of the damage, not the individual athletes.

LeMond was actually already in decline when he had the hunting accident, but still managed to win two TdFs afterwards

It's only fair to assume the accident had (or would normally have had) a major negative impact on his base line performance level. The pellets perforated his kidney (and he only had one, so go figure), his liver, and his lung(s). For him to come back to his old level, in itself, is a miracle. And his comeback, especially his 1989 mid-Giro revival, has indeed been described mainly in such terms: "unbelievable, miraculous", etc.

There's one thing that would convince me 100% (since there's still a sliver of doubt inside me): if anyone would manage to find a connection between the doctor Vanmol and Michiel Karsten, I'd be totally convinced. They're both Dutch doctors from '88/'89 who are mentioned in connection with EPO and this seems far too much of a coincidence, just one year after EPO was announced to have been a success in clinical trials. According to several of Sniper's posts upthread, Vanmol was LeMond's doctor around the time and Karsten is the doctor who supposedly administered EPO to allow Yvonne van Gennip to win three gold medals at the '88 Winter Olympics, at the cost of the East German speed skaters. I'm afraid I couldn't find this connection online. All I could find was that Karsten claimed he administered PEDs to about 150 (!) sporters at the time and that in december 1997 he claimed he never administered EPO or HGH.

[/quote]
Very interesting, thanks for pointing me in the direction of this Karsten guy. It's the first time I've heard of him, and the first time I hear about Van Gennep being on the juice. (which makes perfect sense of course).

As for Yvan Vanmol (I think he was Belgian, btw, not Dutch):
Yes, he was Lemond's doc in 1989.
However, for the record, I do not think Vanmol is a sine-qua-non for the hypothesis that Lemond used EPO in 1989 (or before or after that).
If we consider:
(a) Lemond's closest entourage (a mexican soigneur, a nurse, and an immunologist and ex-surgeon);
(b) his medical profile (kidney problems + anemia); and
(c) him being based close to Amgen,
then it's not hard to imagine that, if he wanted to, Lemond could've gotten access to EPO easily, with or without Vanmol.

That said, of course I agree that Vanmol's own dark history with EPO and with anemic riders adds plausibility to the hypothesis that Lemond used EPO, at least in 1989.

 

[Maxiton]

Re: Re:

...
According to my idea, LeMond had this thing about winning without cheating. Weird, I know, especially in such a notoriously doped sport, but if true he wouldn't have been on EPO at the 91 Tour because it was banned after May of that year.

this is a possibility. It would not explain why he did cheat on the techonological front.
Nor does it explain why he buddies up with known dopers and keepers of omerta. Nor, in terms of character, does it nicely fit in with his well-known 'love for the dollar'. Or with him recording phonecalls without permission.
But that doesn't mean it's not a possibility.

I think you're missing the crucial point. The debate, to the extent there is a debate, has always been about cheating ("Was LeMond a cheater?"). What I'm saying is, he didn't need to cheat. He could have gotten all the help he needed without cheating. There's a world of difference between doing everything permitted by the rules and cheating.

Take the aero profile for example. It's unreasonable to persist in calling this cheating. The people who make the rules and enforce them said at the time, and say now, that this was permissible. Historians of the sport agree. You can call it cheating until your dying day but that doesn't make it so.

As for being buddies with known dopers and keepers of omerta: cycling is his sport. If you're going to associate with grand tour champions, you're going to associate with cheaters. If the whole thing is disreputable - if LeMond refused to be friends with his colleagues on the grounds that they cheated, it would diminish his own standing in the sport and diminish his credibility. Maybe knowing that he managed to win without cheating is good enough for him.

Why, then, you might ask, did he call out Armstrong? Because of Armstrong's arrogance, and because Armstrong was disrespecting him. Because Armstrong was disrespecting the French, and, many felt, the race. Because Armstrong was going well beyond what was necessary to compete and win.

(After Armstrong won the Word's in 1993, a reporter asked him, "Lance, do you think you'll be the next Greg LeMond?" Armstrong's answer: "Who's Greg LeMond?")

A better possibility, imo, is that it was health-related. As I posted earlier:

...
Halupczok died 1990, due to a heart attack likely caused by EPO, as did several other riders with whom Greg Lemond was in more or less close contact (Draaijer of course the best well known one)...and suddenly one starts to understand why Lemond called it a day in 1991.

And 'calling it a day' may even be a gross overstatement. Maybe he just toned it down. He wasn't that bad in 1991.
Either way, it nicely fits with what Nick777 posted that according to a doc in the know Lemond's blood was getting too thick towards the end of his carreer. If there's truth to that rumor (and I haven't seen any reason to assume it was made up to discredit Lemond), it is not hard to understand why he would have toned it down.

So you think he was introduced to EPO for health reasons, and then found out it conferred performance enhancement? Could be. Doesn't mean he was still using it after May of 91. There were many other things his doc could have used on him, legally, after that date.

It's a lot more difficult to prove LeMond was a cheater than it is to demonstrate the obvious: that he took every advantage he could possibly find, without being a cheater. That's why I'm going on about this.

 

[GJB123]

Re: LeMond

Thanks an aweful lot for the AD article several pages back, Sniper!

credit where credit is due: it was posted earlier by Fearless Greg Lemond, who, by the way, has also contributed some amazing stuff (some hard-to-find, little-known articles) to the dopeology website.

...
At the time, I didn't know about EPO. In fact, I only learned about the stuff in '98 with the Festina affair (I can't tell you how horrible it is to hear your sports hero (Alex Zülle) admits to having used doping, when you're just about 10 years old and hardly know of the existence of doping yet), and I never connected it to the LeMond story I sort of knew to be a fact.

same here. I didn't know anything about EPO. Hell, I didn't know **** about doping at all, until the Contador positive broke in 2010, and I joined this forum, which has been a major eyeopener.
My sporting heroes are few (Dutch cycling has been hopeless ever since I follow the sport ), and if I have any, it would be in soccer, guys like Cruyff and Van Basten. And yes, it was quite sobering to learn that they, too, are all doped to the gills. But then again, I've never been the kind of poster to blame individuals for their doping. It's the system that's doing most of the damage, not the individual athletes.

LeMond was actually already in decline when he had the hunting accident, but still managed to win two TdFs afterwards

It's only fair to assume the accident had (or would normally have had) a major negative impact on his base line performance level. The pellets perforated his kidney (and he only had one, so go figure), his liver, and his lung(s). For him to come back to his old level, in itself, is a miracle. And his comeback, especially his 1989 mid-Giro revival, has indeed been described mainly in such terms: "unbelievable, miraculous", etc.

There's one thing that would convince me 100% (since there's still a sliver of doubt inside me): if anyone would manage to find a connection between the doctor Vanmol and Michiel Karsten, I'd be totally convinced. They're both Dutch doctors from '88/'89 who are mentioned in connection with EPO and this seems far too much of a coincidence, just one year after EPO was announced to have been a success in clinical trials. According to several of Sniper's posts upthread, Vanmol was LeMond's doctor around the time and Karsten is the doctor who supposedly administered EPO to allow Yvonne van Gennip to win three gold medals at the '88 Winter Olympics, at the cost of the East German speed skaters. I'm afraid I couldn't find this connection online. All I could find was that Karsten claimed he administered PEDs to about 150 (!) sporters at the time and that in december 1997 he claimed he never administered EPO or HGH.

Very interesting, thanks for pointing me in the direction of this Karsten guy. It's the first time I've heard of him, and the first time I hear about Van Gennep being on the juice. (which makes perfect sense of course).

As for Yvan Vanmol (I think he was Belgian, btw, not Dutch):
Yes, he was Lemond's doc in 1989.
However, for the record, I do not think Vanmol is a sine-qua-non for the hypothesis that Lemond used EPO in 1989 (or before or after that).
If we consider:
(a) Lemond's closest entourage (a mexican soigneur, a nurse, and an immunologist and ex-surgeon);
(b) his medical profile (kidney problems + anemia); and
(c) him being based close to Amgen,
then it's not hard to imagine that, if he wanted to, Lemond could've gotten access to EPO easily, with or without Vanmol.

That said, of course I agree that Vanmol's own dark history with EPO and with anemic riders adds plausibility to the hypothesis that Lemond used EPO, at least in 1989.

As to the bolded, you are in good company, because I think that is exactly the line LeMond has always taken and it is one of the main reasons why he doesn't have an issue to "buddy up with known dopers and keepers of omertà" as you call it, as he doesn't see them as the main culprits in this sordid situation. Yet you do use it to frame LeMond in a certain narrative. Why?

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

@maxiton:
very fair points.
Indeed, we seem to have a slightly different perspective on the matter.
I'm personally less interested in the "did he cheat yes/no?" question, but more interested in the "did he manipulate his blood?" question.
Cheater or not, that's largely going to be a matter of taste. It's a difficult proposition. For instance:
I read somewhere else that blood transfusions were made illegal in the US already in 1985. So if he transfused in 86, was he cheat in your book?

For me, the larger, more interesting question is: "what is possible on a bike on bread and water?"
Therefore, more useful than the "cheater yes/no" question, is, imo, to know whether he won those TdFs with or without blood manipulation.

Anyway, my point in reply to your post was this:
if he stopped using EPO in 1991, I personally don't think that that decision was driven by "fair-play" morals, as you seem to suggest, but rather driven by "I don't wanna drop dead" morals.

 

[sniper]

Re: LeMond

...
As to the bolded, you are in good company, because I think that is exactly the line LeMond has always taken and it is one of the main reasons why he doesn't have an issue to "buddy up with known dopers and keepers of omertà" as you call it, as he doesn't see them as the main culprits in this sordid situation. Yet you do use it to frame LeMond in a certain narrative. Why?

you make a very valid point.

But can we please give that conspiracy thinking a rest already. Nobody's using anything to frame anybody, and there's no 'certain narrative'. There's just Clinic discussion.

 

[sniper]

...
Maxiton: It's a lot more difficult to prove LeMond was a cheater than it is to demonstrate the obvious: that he took every advantage he could possibly find, without being a cheater. That's why I'm going on about this.

Why, in your view, would Lemond think about procycling in terms of cheating vs. non-cheating?
When nobody (or really very few) other proriders think in those terms? What makes you believe he had this "play by the rules" awareness?
Almost all proriders that have gone on the record about their doping have told us that what we consider cheating wasn't cheating to them. In procycling terms, cheating is when you get caught with your hands in the cooky jar. If you don't get caught, you don't cheat.
Why would Lemond have thought otherwise? Where did his fairplay awareness come from?

For the record, and you know I'm not bs-ing you, I'm not out to make the point that he cheated (although some posters will put that agenda on me, no doubt).
I just don't think his alleged fair-play morals should play much of a role in establishing what peds he took when and until when.